Decisions

When you were born, you had no idea where you were and what you were doing there. You were terrified but exhilarated as you took in the bright wide world around you. Once you started to get a handle on the world a little bit, you got curious. What is this? Who is that? Once happens if I do this? You explored, and through exploring you learned about the world. You learned which things are good and which are bad. Which are safe and which are dangerous. Which are fun and which are boring. But no matter what you experience, you hold on to a sense of wonder about this place you still don't understand, the world. You start to learn how to express yourself. You smile when you're happy and cry when you're sad and start to make sounds and gestures to get your point across. Then you learn how to speak and can interact in an all new way. You feel like things just keep getting better and better but you just can't express how you feel because the words, the actions just don't exist. So you carry this lightness, this giddy feeling of joy somewhere inside you, maybe your heart, and feel a fluttering excitement in your chest every time you think of it.

So finally you turn 5 and off you go to school for the first time and learn all about concepts and ideas that you never dreamed of. You love it, but now your life starts to change. The children around you are strange and sometimes cruel creatures. They play pranks on you and call you names and make you cry. They don't get in trouble because your teacher never sees and you don't know you're supposed to tell her about things like that. You like her, but also a little afraid of her because she punishes you because you disrupt the class, but really you behave the way you always have, you do something else when you get bored or when you see something that interests you. This is the first time you learn that being different and being curious aren't always a good thing.

Time passes, and as you go through the grades this lesson is pounded into you more and more. You chest flutters less. You get less curious. You start to wonder if the whole wide world is actually dull and dreary and if you haven't seen everything there is to see. Hormones kick in and your body goes wild, becomes uncontrollable. New and almost painful desires take hold and you are scared because you don't know what's really happening. You feel angrier and everything seems grayer and grayer all the time.

So now you're an adult and you work in an office. Maybe you sell insurance, maybe you sell paper. It doesn't matter. What does matter is you work all day in a windowless cubicle under unnatural light and your curiosity about the world is almost gone. That wonder you felt about the world? Now all you know is the office. You don't feel bad but you don't feel good either. You live a bland, beige kind of life. Except...

Sometimes you'll feel a twinge of something in your heart, a slight stirring. Sometimes after it rains you see a rainbow and you feel it. Sometimes you hear a song, even a song you've heard a thousands times before and you feel it that one time. Sometimes you're on a coffee break and just sitting and everything in the world is alright again, just for a second. But then it passes and you sigh and go back to work and forget the whole thing.

So what do you do? Do you work to try and get that feeling back? Or do you let it fade away?